Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

If you have a blog of any size or you desire to grow a large blog, this article is for you.

Simple Tool to Manage your Content Flow

Do you work inside of WordPress and you have multiple writers or others who manage the content for your blog? Rather than messing around with spreadsheets and Google Docs, try EditFlow plugin for WordPress. EditFlow is a plugin that allows you to do things that are, for example, only visible for editors. Only the people that are editors can see the comment. You can have a dialogue right inside the post! It provides a searchable and sortable calendar so you can see all the articles that are written in an easy way. You can post “needs images” and other comments in the sidebar to manage your content flow.

Is it Too Late to Start Blogging?

As a new blogger, you might think that it is too late. You might think that the other successful bloggers have too much of a head start. With blogging, any person can develop a voice. People starting now to blog are not too late. It’s certainly more cluttered and there are a lot more blogs, but this opens up opportunities to network and grow faster. While there are a lot of people blogging today, there is no one that has the exact same set of experiences, stories, skills and perspectives. Harness what you have that is unique. It’s a great way to break through into the blogging industry.

Techniques to Attract and Engage your Blog Visitors

The editorial mix that goes into a successful blog varies. But for the most part, successful blog editors post one newsletter each week (on Thursday or Friday) with tips for the weekend. With a team of writers and a few guest writers, two original articles are posted daily. To engage with as many social networks as possible, it takes a lot of time. So, in order to succeed you must plan and strategically schedule your resources. During the week there is usually a “challenge” assignment for visitors to take-away and build upon the tutorials that are published earlier in the week.

Model for Blogging:

People are much more likely to read tutorials if they have been inspired to do so. The key things that are used for success of a unique blog include a successful editorial model. Each blog is different, but for the most part this editorial calendar works.

Build three things into the editorial calendar:

Information – 90%

Inspiration

Interaction

This is all free content. Four day a week posts, twice daily, plus a summary newsletter once a week to roll-up the tips and outline information posted during the week.

What Is Long-Form Content and Why Does It Work?

Long form content is a trend that is doing very well on blogs. Long-form content can be called “meatier” content. While typical news-friendly content includes articles with 500-800 word range, long-form content is different. A typical blogger’s average piece of content was around 1,000 words or fewer. Articles focused heavily on SEO, including keyword optimization. The only problem with this strategy? Bloggers were getting a lot of search traffic, but not a lot of return traffic, direct traffic, or brand searches, and user engagement metrics – stuff like bounce rate and time on site – were pretty low.

Long-form content, on the other hand, isn’t just rewarded by the search engines – it also resonates with readers. By creating longer, more in-depth content that provides tons of value to an audience, bloggers’ content strategy has seen success with improved engagement metrics.

Ideal Blog Content Size

Based on statistical data, the ideal blog post takes seven minutes to read and is around 1,600 words long. This is not light reading but is well worth the extra time and investment because some blog editors report that with long-form content, the average time on site has more than tripled!

Extra Content Ideas

Contests (with a prize) and polls (or discussions) are important. Community and engagement is key. Anything you can get a reader to “do” on your site is important. Second, it teaches you a great deal about your readers. At the end of the month, a monthly poll with a follow-up post to re-visit the data is useful to readers. Additionally, other blogs will consider your content good research data that they will want to link to.

Forums – although a bit of old school technology, is still interesting for readers. Readers can have discussions and show off some of their own ideas. Forums are easy to setup and in most cases, your web hosting provider will offer you a free tool that is easy to use.

Plugins for Functionality Improvement

With the growth of long-form content, the user scrolls down to read the entire article. This causes the sidebar items, in most cases, to scroll up or disappear temporarily. The ability to keep some of the most important sidebar items visible and remain persistent is a great solution to add to an existing blog.

Floating Sidebar

Lightboxes

Exit live boxes

End of post boxes appear

What do you want the user to see when they get to the end of the page? If you can deliver something different there, you can increase page views or newsletter subscribers.

Where can I get these plugins?

Most of these plugins are available at WordPress.com. If you are looking for a more specific plugin geared toward professional blogging, you might consider joining problogger.com. If you become a member of problogger.com/download-center you will find all the plugins that they have developed for professional blogging.

The plugins for bloggers include:

Facebook tracking,

Sticky Top Bar messenger,

Flicker plugin to suck in images into your blog

EasyDigitalDownloads – manage all your eBook sales from within WordPress

WordPress editorial calendar – helps to visualize all posts that are scheduled and you can drag and drop then around in order to change the posting date

Monetizing your Website

There are heaps of ways that you can monetize your content. If you are limited to only a few and can’t spend too much time testing all the monetization options available, then you can limit your energy to eBooks and affiliate links.

eBooks Monetization

eBooks are a profitable income streams. If you launch 4-5 eBooks a year, it provides a good little income for you over the years. Writing and publishing eBooks is an entire strategy that will be outlined in a different article. There is so much information that is needed in order to fully explain this monetization strategy.

More Monetization Ideas

Affiliate promotions such as Amazon links, provide a good income too. Newsletter ads and banner ads can be lucrative too as a publisher. Good old fashioned Google AdSense can be profitable for a blogger if you offer a high-level target with your content. It’s hard to beat in terms of direct sales. As with any monetization, be patient, persistent, and use only high-quality, original content.

Web Hosting for Blogs

While most bloggers are using WordPress, there are some bloggers who still use b2evolution or other blogging tools. For the most part, all web hosting providers offer WordPress for free. The question as to whether you need a bargain basement web host or a partner that actually specializes in WordPress with plugin assistance or migration help may be necessary. Every blog is different and which type of web hosting you use is something that you, the business owner, will need to decide. Build a brand that advertisers will want to align with and even with small traffic, if you have really good topics, you can earn a nice living with your blog.

Maybe you’ve been interested in web marketing, but you aren’t sure where to start. It can seem confusing at first, but setting up an affiliate program for your web site is actually surprisingly easy. In a few simple steps, you can start a great affiliate program that will bring in a steady income.

Online marketing requires a lot more than selling great products; it also requires you keeping an up to date site to work as your digital shop. Use current web layouts or news on your domain to keep the patron’s attention. If you let your design or products run out of date, you will notice that you can’t bring in those same quality customers you could previously.

Signing on with a pay-per-sale affiliate promotion plan is risky but it can pay off. When you have a PPS affiliate, you will only be paid if advertising on your site induces a visitor to make a purchase from the advertiser. This is a rare occurrence. When it does happen, though, the payout can be considerable, possibly even a commission on the product sold.

Make sure you have a strategy before you get into online marketing. You want to prepare a plan of what types of products you want to have available and how you are going to attract attention to your webpage. You can’t expect to just make a webpage and that people will just find it. Plan things out and it should help with bringing people to your webpage.

When building affiliate links on your blog, don’t forget that you need traffic on your site first. If no one is reading your blog, there’s no one to click on your affiliate links, no matter how glowing your recommendation or well-place your advertisements. Build a readership for your blog and then join an affiliate program to take advantage of that traffic.

If you are creating an internet marketing program, be sure to give your affiliates a wide selection of powerful tracking tools. This makes it easier for them to see what links are working and what aren’t, which means better profits for you as well. Also, more powerful tools will attract more experienced marketers.

You can up your productivity in affiliate marketing by simply clearing out the clutter from your mind and from your desk. Ensure that you’re only focusing on internet marketing by making sure your desktop is free and clean, and also tidy up a bit in your immediate line of sight. Multiple studies show that a cluttered desk equals a cluttered mind.

It is important as an affiliate that you send your traffic to quality product pages, not to squeeze in pages and other undesirable pages that may turn them off. You can bypass opt-in pages of websites by using link-cloaking tools and sending your customers directly to sales letters and landing pages.

Once you know what you’re doing, setting up an effective and profitable affiliate promotion program is a snap. Before you know it, you’ll be earning money and attracting more visitors to your site. Just remember what you’ve learned in this article, and you’ll have no trouble getting your affiliate program going.